[extropy-chat] Bush wants another $75 billion for wars

Adrian Tymes wingcat at pacbell.net
Fri Nov 5 01:44:43 UTC 2004


--- Mike Lorrey <mlorrey at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- Adrian Tymes <wingcat at pacbell.net> wrote:
> > Okay...so how do you prevent managers from cashing
> > out the company between reports and leaving
> > shareholders with an empty bag?  
> 
> If the managers obtain their stock via employee
> purchase or options
> programs, they would be required to only buy or sell
> stock in the month
> or two AFTER the annual or bi-annual report is
> released.

Which requires government regulation to enforce.

> Anyone who
> purchases stock on the open market could buy and
> sell whenever they
> want.

What of managers who more literally "cash out" the
company by rigging their compensation, then resigning
just before the report to the board is due, but never
own (or don't care about) shares in the company?

> I'd generally discourage this. The reporting system
> is so frequently
> used by corporations to collude at a distance with
> their competitors to
> exploit the consumer that I'd say that either all
> companies in a given
> industry report on the same day, or else the four
> largest competitors
> in a market must report 3 months apart from each
> other.

Requiring reports to be synchronized doesn't sound too
bad.  Income taxes are synchronized in the same way,
so it's not like there isn't precedent for setting
this kind of thing up.



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